Weekend Open Forum: Online since...?

The world wide web turned 20 this week. Though I haven’t been online for that long, it got me reminiscing about the first time I heard my computer make that choreographed sequence of noises that allowed it to piggyback on a phone line and access the series of tubes known as the internet.

It was around 1996 or 97 and it was quite new in my country. I hadn’t even heard of it before my brother had it installed on our computer -- a Macintosh at the time -- and told me this thing connected us to the whole world. “You can even go to Playboy if you want!”, he exclaimed. I don’t remember exactly what I did the first time I got online, probably look up Playboy if I’m honest (don’t judge), but I do remember reading a lot and having fun chatting on an early IRC client as it quickly became popular among people from various local schools.

So yeah.. that was my first online experience of many that followed the next few years, including long C&C gaming sessions as well as building an mp3 download website on Word gathering working links from around the web. How long have you been online and what are your first memories of it?